On April 9, 1241, one of the most relevant battles between the expanding Mongol Empire and the European forces took place. The battlefield was that of Legnica, in the Silesian province of Poland; the invasion…
"Tu quoque, Brute, fili mi?" ("You too, Brutus, my son?") On March 15, 44 BC, the Ides of March, Julius Caesar is assassinated in the Roman Senate by a group of conspirators. The phrase he allegedly…
On March 12, 1088, Pope Urban II was elected by acclamation at a small council in Terracina. Urban, born Eudes around 1042, was from a noble family living near Châtillon-sur-Marne. As a boy, Eudes studied in Reims,…
Today, March 2, marks the anniversary of the assassination of Charles the Good, who was Count of Flanders from 1119 until the year of his death. The only male son of King Canute IV, later…
On February 27, 425 AD, the Byzantine Emperor Theodosius II, at the urging of his wife, Aelia Eudocia, founded the University of Constantinople under the name of Pandidakterion. The school welcomed 31 teachers for law, philosophy,…
On this day, in 1997, the scientists of the Roslin Institute in Scotland publicly announced the existence of the first mammal to have been successfully cloned from the cell of an adult animal: Dolly the…
On February 20, 1816, Gioacchino Rossini's most famous opera, The Barber of Seville, premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. Its libretto being written by Cesare Sterbini and based on Pierre Beaumarchais's 1775 comedy Le Barbier de…
On February 7, 1497 (Mardi Gras day), Girolamo Savonarola's bonfire of the Vanities took place in Piazza della Signoria, Florence. Inspired by the Dominican friar's predicaments against Florence's artistic and cultural mundanity during the time of…